Haggler The Terrible

Y'know sometimes i'm good at getting a bargain and sometimes i'm not. I guess like most things it is subject to the law of averages. Win some lose some. I was meant to go and check the Dance Delight competition today in the Expo area of shanghai. This is a routine based competition (to the best of my knowledge) featuring all styles and would have been a good glimpse of what's going down in Shanghai. Competition starts at 1pm...i woke up at 1245pm. Ok i'll sleep a little longer and then head along to catch the 2nd half. Competition ends at 4pm...i woke up again at 345pm...oh well. Tonight there is an after party in the same spot but i'm going to behave as the serious work begins tomorrow. Not that last week wasn't serious but i'll be working with the full team as Uma plans to join us for this project...if she is not put off by my dance technique and poor grasp of Chinese. This could very well happen. People seem to be very busy at the moment and i've always felt this project was going to be a fluid one, so be like water Tony, be like water.

I thought i better be at least a little productive so i headed into town to the electronics hyper-market area of Xu Jia Hui. You can pick up just about anything here that relies on 1s and 0s to get by. I was in need of a memory disc for my camera and a firewire cable for the vidcamera. The SD card was easily found but the cable required a bit more perseverance. You can't browse in peace in this place so you have to be prepared to be hustled and hustle in return. My dad is a pretty good haggler and on a good day i'm not bad either. There's always a certain sense of satisfaction when you score yourself a bargain in whatever respect. I've seen some sales people act like you've stolen from them when you finally get the price down. Of course there's always the chance that it's all part of a well rehearsed routine to make the customer feel better and possibly come back in the future...and if you don't speak the lingo, well you can be practically nonethewiser. Anyhow, after drawing a few diagrams of what i needed the rather enthusiastic fellow who was serving me, he seemed to visit all the counters on the floor before returning with what i needed. He gave me a price, i laughed. i gave him a price, he rolled his eyeballs. This continued for about 2 mins until i got what i wanted (at least i think so anyway....) and i parted with the cash. Happy with my purchase and with the thought i will now be able to add some video to these blogs i came home, connected my camera, fired up imovie and....it doesn't work!!! Now this is either some kind of compatibility issue, as i've not used this camera with my comp before, or it's a dodgy cable. And i can't help feeling it's the latter.